SUMMARY OF PRINCIPLES¹ AND JUST WAR

 

PRINCIPLES

I.  Man does not have absolute control over his life and destiny, but has the God-given duty to guard both his own life and those of others.

 

II. Catholic teaching regarding the sacredness of all human life is founded on the fact that all men are made in the image of God, endowed by their creator with an immortal soul and called to everlasting interpersonal communion with the Blessed Trinity.

 

III. Man’s natural obligation to respect human life was completed and brought to perfection by Jesus Christ who died that all might be saved. 

 

IV. The death of Christ teaches us that human or earthly life is not an end in itself and is not to be preserved at all costs.  It also teaches us that human suffering has value in the sight of God.

 

V.  Jesus not only repeated the prohibition against the taking of innocent human life but enjoined his followers to love their enemies. 

 

VI.  The Christian is obliged to preserve his own life and the lives of others.  Self-defense is therefore permitted.  Self-defense is found in three forms or, more properly, at three levels:

A.  Individual, when a person defends himself or another whose life is under attack.  Proportionate force is morally licit.

B.  Social.  Civil authority has the responsibility to protect the citizenry from those who deal mortal damage and may, when necessary, impose capital punishment.

1.  Historically the Christian moral tradition has acknowledged the legitimacy of capital punishment – not as revenge, but as self-defense at the societal level.

2.  Recent papal teaching, while recognizing the theoretical legitimacy of capital punishment, holds that modern societies have other means at their disposal to protect citizens and, therefore, only in extraordinary circumstances is capital punishment morally justifiable.

C. National.  The government’s first responsibility is to protect its citizens, and has a moral right to use military force in service of this end.  See the conditions for a just war below. 

VII.  The prohibition against taking innocent human life means that murder, suicide, assisted suicide, abortion, euthansia (mercy-killing) are strictly forbidden.  Likewise, embryonic stem cell research is forbidden, because it destroys the life of the embryo.  And, for reasons considered under the sixth commandments, so is cloning 

 

VIII.  The prohibition against the taking of innocent human life extends to protecting the wholeness of human life.

A.  Therefore mutilation and sterilization are forbidden. 

B.  Organ donation, however, is permissible if the organ is not necessary for the donor’s well-being (the good must outweigh the bad) and if the organ is harvested with proper consent from a deceased person. 

IX.  The prohibition against the taking of human life requires each person to respect and prudently protect his own health and well-being, and forbids everything that is harmful to the same.  Therefore, offenses against this commandment include the abuse of drugs and alcohol, reckless driving, and everything else that endangers one’s own life or that of another. 

 

X.  And by extension, the commandment also forbids anything that endangers the soul or spiritual well-being of another, and obliges us to give good example and to speak the truth on moral matters when required to do so. (This, by the way, is why the Church regarded heresy as a capital crime during certain periods of history -- for it was thought that heretics posed a danger to the eternal salvation of souls of those whom they would win to their erroneous ways of thinking.

 

JUST WAR

Conditions necessary for a JUST WAR (all of the following conditions must be simultaneously present)

A.  Military action must be a last resort.  All other avenues of peaceful settlement must be pursued, and end in failure.

 

B.  Cause must be sufficiently grave and legitimate. 

1.  Both offensive and defensive campaigns may be initiated for sufficient reason

2.  These may be in resistance, pre-emptive or reactionary

a)  To a foreign aggressor

b)  Or in prosecution of rights (e.g. territorial sovereignty) that no higher authority can protect.

C.  There must be a reasonable hope of success.

 

D.  War must be declared and waged by proper authority.  In other words, sovereign states in the person of recognized officials are the only agents capable of declaring and waging a just war. 

 

E.  The goods obtained by military conflict must outweigh the tremendous evils which will come about as a result. 

 

F.  War, when waged, must be waged in a moral fashion

1. Under no circumstances are non-combatants to be targeted by any military action.

a) Military leaders must wield weapons with great care and discernment.

b) Military leaders are to prosecute war expeditiously to a quick and decisive completion to avoid bloody and unsuccessful statemates.²

2.  orture, terrorism, kidnapping and so forth are never justified. 

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¹Adapted from:  Aurelio Fernández and James Socias, Our Moral Life in Christ: a Basic Course on Moral Theology (Princeton: Scepter Publisher, Inc., 1997) 263-264.

²Adapted from:  Aurelio Fernández and James Socias, Our Moral Life in Christ: a Basic Course on Moral Theology (Princeton: Scepter Publisher, Inc., 1997) 256.